Washington D.C. [USA], Apr 25 : In the past, scientists typically avoided linking individual weather events to climate change, citing the challenges of teasing apart human influence from the natural variability of the weather. But that is changing.

"Over the past decade, there's been an explosion of research, to the point that we are seeing results released within a few weeks of a major event," said Diffenbaugh, who is also the Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

In a new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Diffenbaugh and a group of current and former Stanford colleagues outline a four-step "framework" for testing whether global warming has contributed to record-setting weather events.

On Thursday, Pope Francis will deliver a papal encyclical on ethical issues and environment. The official guide states that humanity is 'slapping nature in the face'.

The Pope is expecting the paper to have a great impact on UN conference to be held in Paris in December. The nations can pledge to cut emissions. It is said the encyclical is the highest level of document that the pope can issue.

Papal encyclical is a letter from the Pope to bishops sent with an aim to help guide church teachings for the world's Catholics and is considered as an important instruction for the community. Many said that there is no problem if the Pope has to remind that humanity is a responsible steward of earth.

A study conducted by an international team of researchers has found that the rising temperature on the planet has been strengthening the intensity of tropical cyclones in the north-west Pacific. According to the researchers, ferocity of tropical cyclones will continue to increase with change in the earth’s climate over the century.

During the study, the researchers analyzed more than 800 typhoons in the north-west Pacific and discovered that the intensity of the storms has increased about 10% since 1970s. According to Wei Mei, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California and co-author of the study, the increase is surprising.

Washington, Nov 14 : A new research has revealed that lightning is expected to increase by 50 percent with global warming.

Climate scientists at University of California, Berkeley, who looked at predictions of precipitation and cloud buoyancy in 11 different climate models, concluded that their combined effect will generate more frequent electrical discharges to the ground.

Scientist David Romps said that with warming, thunderstorms become more explosive and this has to do with water vapor, which is the fuel for explosive deep convection in the atmosphere.

The Lakeshore Entertainment's project, which is based on Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, would be helmed by director Phillip Noyce and would be produced by Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi, the Hollywood Reporter reported.

The story centers on a former high school athlete, who inherits his father's business and has a perfect life with his former beauty queen wife and daughter, until his daughter becomes a revolutionary during the Vietnam War.

Washington, June 12 : A new study has revealed that development of a huge mountain range in the middle of the ancient supercontinent, Pangea helped Earth to avoid huge rise in atmospheric CO2 last time.

Dr Yves Godderis said that the formation of these mountains meant that the rock weathering, which was threatening to slow to a walk through much of the supercontinent, was able to continue and the steep slopes of these Hercynian Mountains produced physical erosion occurring in a humid equatorial environment, this physical erosion promoted rock weathering and removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

New York, June 2 : Forget about positioning giant mirrors in space to reduce the amount of sunlight being trapped in the earth's atmosphere or seeding clouds to reduce the amount of light entering earth's atmosphere.

Those climate engineering approaches are not likely to be effective or practical in slowing global warming as compared to reducing emissions through conservation, increased energy efficiency and low-carbon fuels

"We found that climate engineering does not offer a perfect option," said Daniela Cusack, an assistant professor of geography at University of California, Los Angeles.

Washington, Feb 15 : A new report suggests that the unique and irreplaceable Arctic wildlife and landscapes are crucially at risk due to global warming caused by human activities.

The Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA) is a report prepared by 253 scientists from 15 countries under the auspices of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the biodiversity working group of the Arctic Council.

Montreal, Jan 16 : India and China are reportedly among the world's seven countries that are responsible for global warming, a new study has found.

The study conducted by Concordia University found that the United States, China, Russia, Brazil, India, Germany and the United Kingdom as the biggest contributors to the rising temperatures of the world.

It has been found that these countries were collectively responsible for more than 60 percent of pre-2005 global warming.

New York, Jan 9 : The arctic blast that brought record low temperatures across the US in the past few days has provided fuel for global-warming sceptics, even as scientists debate whether the extreme cold might, in fact, be a consequence of a warming climate.

"Of course, we can't say that this particular pattern is due to arctic warming, but it's very consistent with what we expect to see happen," said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The Varadero resort, one of Cuba's main vacation destinations, which hosts a million tourists annually, is losing 40,000 to 50,000 cubic metres of sand a year due to erosion, Xinhua cited the Cuban News Agency (ACN) as saying.

Official figures in 2012 indicated that erosion had affected almost 84 percent of the beaches in Cuba. Several Cuban beaches have already been washed away.

Climate change will hit Indian monsoon system very hard in the next two centuries unless governments take sincere steps to limit global warming, a new study has warned.

A team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Potsdam University found that the combination of rising temperatures and variations in force of the Pacific Walker circulation in spring could result into more frequent and harsh changes in monsoon rainfall between 2150 and 2200 A. D.

Worldwide carbon emissions have reached a total of 10 billion tones, doubling in the last two decades, according to the team at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

The increase confirms a trend of rising emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning. Scientists believe that it will result in severe climate change in coming few decades. The figures published in Nature Climate Change show that it might be very difficult for the governments to control the global warming from increasing more than 2C from the pre-industrialized levels.

Senior scientists at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WITG) has rejected the Global Warming Theory and told that the Himalayas are quite safer zone on earth, where Global Warming has no role in controlling the conditions.

In an exclusive chat with HT, Director WIHG Dr AK Dubey has said that the conditions of Himalayas are controlled by the winter snowfall rather than external factors like much hyped Global Warming. He told that for a concrete result, at least 30 years of continuous research with steady outcome is needed to confirm the actual impact.

It may be lagging far behind its neighbours like India and China in development, but Nepal has managed to score a lead over other South Asian nations in environment protection according to a latest worldwide survey.

The 2010 Environmental Performance Index released on Thursday at Davos has ranked Nepal 38th among 163 countries on 25 performance indicators tracked across 10 policy categories covering both environmental public health and eco-system vitality.

Only Japan (20) and Singapore (28) are the other Asian countries that have performed better than the Himalayan nation. Nepal’s bigger neighbours India and China have been ranked 123 and 121 respectively in the survey.

Days after the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted to goofing up on Himalayan glaci-ers, it said it was reviewing earli-er finding blaming global warming for increase in number of natural disasters such as floods and droughts.

In short: the panel could have got this wrong too.

“We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings,” IPCC vice-chairperson Jean-Pascal van Ypersele told a London weekly Sunday Times.

India, Brazil, China and South Africa, together called the Basic countries, on Sunday said the Copenhagen Accord was only a political agreement and not legally binding as being argued by the developed countries.

The four countries also said they will announce their plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by January 31 as agreed in Copenhagen.

This is in line with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s letter to Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen stating that the accord was just a “political agreement” and was not “binding”.

Nobody is ever responsible for anything, it seems, after Copenhagen. The rich countries, primary contributors to this mess, have got away scott free. It’s as if we don’t live on the same planet anymore. The most disturbing aspect of this is the historic reflection it casts once more.

From the fifteenth century onwards, colonizers have sailed to other countries and used technological and other advantages to plunder them. The amassed riches helped the colonizers develop.

The landscape after Copenhagen is not that different-we haven’t even caused the problem.